Questions VT-election

At a meeting in Velferdstinget on Monday 3 December, Fredrik Refsnes was elected President of Velferdstinget, following Stine Winger Minde. Refsnes will take over the position on 1 January 2008. The rest of the Executive committee (VT-AU) of 2008 consists of: Marianne Høva Rustberggard from Fakultetslistene (FL) as Vice-President, Guro Fresvik from BI Nydalen as Executive for Welfare, Solveig Tesdal from Venstrealliansen (VA) as Executive for Organisations and Lene Hopland Bergset from Menighetsfakultetet as Executive for PR.

In the wake of the constitutive meeting, VA has strongly criticised the negotiations that took place before the election. Thomas Tallaksen, Vice-President of the Student Parliament’s Executive committee and member of Velferdsalliansen’s Executive committee, points out that VA became the largest fraction during this year’s Student Parliament election. Now he accuses SD and FL of making agreements prior to the election in order to vote each other’s candidates in as President and Vice-President.

– The composition of the Executive committee was decided at the pub and not based on the election result, Tallaksen claims, and goes on to say that this is a clear break with former praxis where the fraction with the most support from the voters has ended up either as President or as Vice-President.

President of SD, Ole Andre Gjerde, denies that any agreements were made prior to the negotiations and says that VA has nothing to base these accusations on.

– VA is doing nothing but moping. They point out that they are the biggest fraction, and yet they only have one and two more representatives than the fractions that ended up with the executive positions. The fact that they even left the meeting in the middle of the negotiations shows how unwilling they are to negotiate, Gjerde adds.

Iselin Ru-Goksøyr from FL agrees that the accusations are unfounded.

– Naturally, we had made up some thoughts on who we wanted to see in which position, but nothing was settled, she says.

Rud-Goksøyr explains that FL based their decision on the fact they thought SD had a stronger leadership candidate than VA.

Tallaksen does not believe the explanations.

– We cannot support a negotiation process that goes against the election result. The only thing we were offered was a place on the Akademika-board, something we found ridiculous. We risk having an Executive committee devoid of political visions, he concludes.